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Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even for ever. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will perform this. (Isaiah 9:7) |
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We can notice several facts in Isaiah 9:7. |
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There is coming a Kingdom to the earth that will increase forever. Maybe this means that people will still be born in the next age, or maybe it means that the rule of Christ in the hearts of people will continue to grow. |
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There will be a continuing increase of peace. How long have world leaders been seeking peace? It always eludes them. It always shall. Only God can bring peace and He gives it only to the righteous. As long as there is sin in the world there will be uproars. |
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The Lord Jesus will govern from the throne of King David, no doubt from the Temple Mount in the city of Jerusalem. Let us never forget that the Kingdom of God is Jewish in character and we Gentiles have been made a part of the Kingdom by God's grace. |
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The Kingdom is eternal and will be established with justice and righteousness. David was a just, righteous king. His greater Son, Jesus, is infinitely more just and righteous even than King David. |
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The Christian tradition holds that when Jesus comes He will take His people to Heaven in the spirit realm. This is not scriptural. When Jesus comes He will bring His saints with Him, transform those who remain alive on the earth, bring them all up to meet Him in the air so they can return with Him, and then descend to make an end of injustice and unrighteousness. |
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Then will the meek rejoice for they shall inherit the earth. |
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Then will the wicked scream in terror for they shall be destroyed from the earth. |
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When Messiah comes He will bring peace and justice to the earth. Can you think of anything more needed in our world? |
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The governments of today talk much of peace and justice. They always and forever will fail to reach all of their goals. Why is this? It is because their hearts are wicked. It appears there is more wickedness, dishonesty, covetousness, fornication, treachery, slander, criticism, self-seeking in the governments of the world than anywhere else. How can such people bring justice and peace to the world? |
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Only Jesus can change the heart of an individual so he brings justice and peace to his own sphere of influence. |
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How about you? Is Jesus working in your soul to remove worldliness, lust, and self- seeking so you are becoming a peacemaker, a son of God? Is real change taking place in your heart? Are those around you beginning to benefit from your transformation? |
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I am not asking you if you are a church member or a professing Christian. I am asking if you are being changed. |
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People don't want to hear about your religion or how you are saved by imputed righteousness. They are looking for righteous behavior to shine through your personality. |
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If you are a Christian you are supposed to be an ambassador for the coming Kingdom of God. How well are you representing the King of your kingdom? Are you giving others hope for better things to come? |
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Rejoice O crazy, drunken, blind, miserable earth. Your true and only King is on the way accompanied by real Christians, not the kind you've probably seen but people who care about you and have the power to bring you love, peace, and joy. Rejoice greatly! |
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The Light even now is on the horizon. Your deliverance is at hand. Make way for the kings from the East. |
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Hallelujah! |
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And the devil said unto him, If thou be the Son of God, command this stone that it be made bread. And Jesus answered him, saying, It is written, That man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God. (Luke 4:3,4) |
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Every son of God is tested in the area of bread, the kingdoms of the world, and the pinnacle. |
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The temptation of bread has to do with finding security and survival in the world instead of in God. |
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Not all people are vulnerable in the same area of personality. Some individuals find the temptation of bread almost impossible to overcome. |
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Command this stone to be made bread. Focus your life on food, on shelter, on money, on what this world can do for you. The most important thing in life is to make a living. Whoever does not provide for his family is worse than an unbeliever. |
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We understand we are supposed to work and to provide for our loved ones. Paul says if we don't work we shouldn't eat. There are Christians who are "living by faith" who ought to be earning their keep. I have no use for religious bums who go from house to house talking about spiritual things. All such talk gets you nowhere with God. |
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The Lord Jesus made it plain that God is concerned about our physical survival. He commanded us to seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness and whatever we need will be added to us. Either He will or He won't. In my own case God has provided so I am satisfied the Word is true. |
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There are men who work, work, work until there is no time left for God. They find security in this. They grub in the mud but God wants them to spend some time among the stars. They destroy their spiritual life doing this and will get no thanks for it. |
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We are supposed to live by the words that come from God's mouth. God is speaking at all times. Some of those words are directed at us. We are to listen to them and live by them. But we can't hear them and listen to the world at the same time. |
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If you are not taking the time to listen to God and are spending your time eating, working, playing, sleeping, and reproducing you might as well be a horse. |
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The only God Jesus mentioned is Mammon, the God of riches. No one can serve God and money. People amass money in case God doesn't come through. |
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Money is one of the chief gods of the United States of America. The money says "In God we trust." It ought to say in money we trust. |
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I dare you to take time each day to look to God for the survival and security of you and your loved ones. In fact I double-dare you. (We used to say that when we were kids.) |
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Life is too short to worship the world, money, education, and the rest of the resources of Antichrist. God alone is to be trusted. |
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You can't take it with you. Stop now and consider—are you wasting your life? Why not ask for the Bread of eternal life that comes from the great Rock—Jesus? |
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And the devil, taking him up into an high mountain, shewed unto him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. And the devil said unto him, All this power will I give thee, and the glory of them: for that is delivered unto me; and to whomsoever I will I give it. If thou therefore wilt worship me, all shall be thine. And Jesus answered and said unto him, Get thee behind me, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve. (Luke 4:5-8) |
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The second arena of temptation has to do with pleasure, and the realm of pleasure is that of worship. |
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Some individuals are not tempted by the frantic desire for money and material things. They are "party" people. As long as they are having fun they don't care whether they are paying their rent or sleeping in the gutter. |
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This is the area of lust, of the arts, of drugs. |
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A man will leave his wife and children when he is seduced by lust. Satan plays on his mind and he loses touch with reality. All he can understand is the need to satisfy his cravings. |
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How many mighty saints have been pulled down from their place by lust. They had been among those who stand in the Presence of the Lord. Now they are busily indulging in the cravings of their flesh, driven by grotesque goblins in the spirit realm. |
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Some are pulled off the ladder by "beautiful" romantic spirits, inspired by Wagner and Chopin. Others fulfill their appetites in sleazy motels, waking up in their vomit, heedless of the commitments made to more faithful people (and their children), beginning to worry about venereal disease and AIDS. |
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One more for the road! |
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These are the kingdoms of the world. Lust, drunkenness, murder, and every other sin abound in the temples of the democracies as well as the palaces of the feudal princes. |
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All of this is the worship of Satan, the God of this world. |
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No greater audacity has been witnessed on the world canvas than the fallen cherub asking for the worship of his Creator. How stupid, we say. |
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Yet we need to be wary. The same cherub approaches you and me after studying our personality profile. He appeals to the weakness whether gross or highly refined, whether in the area of the bestial or the sublime realms of science and philosophy. It all adds up to C.S. Lewis' "brown girls." |
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How about you? What is the old deceiver working on in you? Is he working in the area of pleasure? Is he playing with your mind? Is he speaking to you of depths of joy? But there are no depths in Satan, only the tired old grind of the lusts of the flesh and soul. He and his demons have no joy or glory. They have been condemned to crave the dust of human flesh. They are cannibals. |
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Have you been tricked in your mind? Cry out to God in the name of Jesus. He will reach down and pull you from the quicksand. Return to those you left in your mad rush to satisfy your cravings. Maybe they'll take you back. |
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I hope they do. If you have learned your lesson you will be a more stable person. |
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Don't try to sail past that shore tied to the mast. Don't reason with Jezebel. Don't imagine you owe anything to the deceived individual whose eyes like your own—if you could see past your fantasy—are burning with fire and sulfur. |
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Get out of there! |
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And he brought him to Jerusalem, and set him on a pinnacle of the temple, and said unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down from hence: for it is written, He shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee: and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone. And Jesus answering said unto him, It is said, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God. (Luke 4:9-12) |
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Every son of God is tested in the area of turning stones into bread, in selling his soul to get the kingdoms of the world, and in showing off by jumping from the pinnacle. |
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Turning stones into bread has to do with our trust in the world for security and survival. Worshiping Satan in order to gain the delights of the kingdoms of the world involves the pursuit of pleasure. Jumping off the gable of the Temple is a test of our desire for personal achievement. |
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The temptation of the pinnacle takes place in Jerusalem, in the place of religious activity. Here Christ was murdered because of the desire of the leaders of Israel for preeminence. |
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We may understand that worldliness is sin and seek to turn away from it, read our Bible, and pray. |
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We may understand that the lusts of the flesh are sin and the good Book warns us concerning these. |
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The arena of personal ambition is not as familiar to us, perhaps because we do not consider striving for achievement to be sin. Actually self-seeking is the worst of all sins and the most destructive. How many works of God have been destroyed because the Christians were attempting to force their own will? |
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"Don't wait for God! Step out in faith! Do great things for God! Come down from the cross!" |
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The person who, like so many Bible characters such as Sarah and Hannah, has been barren for many years while other people were "having children by the dozen," often enjoys the mockery of his or her brothers and sisters. "Why don't you get busy and build a monument like we are doing? You are a loser!" |
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"Jump off the roof. Step out in faith. The Bible tells you what God wants. Go out and compel them to come in. The King's business requires haste." |
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You know what? I don't need this! I am going to sit on this stupid shingle until I hear from God. You can do what you want. |
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"Come down from the wall. We want to talk to you. They're coming to get you in the night!" |
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I want God! I want to hear from God! I am not going to jump off and land in the Kidron Valley sewer with a grapefruit on top of my head. |
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The hardest death we die is to self-will—much harder than worldliness or lust. It takes suffering before we learn stern obedience to the Father. But it is this third death that brings dominion and fruitfulness. |
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The Church is here now. Samson will bring down the whole kingdom of darkness by his death, never by his life. |
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Will you help pin the accuser's shoulders to the mat? |
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For as the earth bringeth forth her bud, and as the garden causeth the things that are sown in it to spring forth; so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring forth before all the nations. (Isaiah 61:11) |
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It is the intention of the Lord God of Heaven that righteousness and praise come to maturity in His Church so the nations of the earth may behold, in the saints, the Person, will, and ways of the God of Heaven. When the nations see the true testimony they will glorify God and walk in His ways. |
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In order to bring into view the righteous behavior He desires, God has given us His only begotten Son so that through His blood we may be forgiven our sins, and through His triumphant life we may be delivered from our sins and commence practicing righteousness in the earth. |
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This is the new covenant of God with Israel and with all who are grafted on Israel, on Christ—the one true Olive Tree. |
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But the deceiver has entered the garden of God. He has distorted the purpose and plan of the Divine redemption. |
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Satan has convinced us that the purpose of Divine grace is to provide us with a pass into Heaven and that righteous works on the earth have little to do with redemption. |
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He has convinced us that no believer in Jesus will be punished at the Judgment Seat of Christ. |
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He has convinced us that God loves us so much He stands ready to forgive us even when there has been no genuine repentance. The goodness of God is stressed but the severity and wrath of God are not emphasized. |
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Satan has convinced us we are not to fear God or His Christ but merely are to reverence Them much as we would reverence the monument to a great statesman. We are quick to accept the change from fear to reverence because our pride and haughtiness will not allow us to fear God as we should. |
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Satan has convinced us that salvation is unconditional such that after we make a profession of belief in the Lord Jesus, no matter how deeply we return to sin we never can be removed from Christ's Presence and blessing. This is a clear departure from the Scripture. |
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He has convinced us there will be a secret translation of the believers so they will not be exposed to the hardships of the great tribulation, using a passage intended by the Apostle Paul to comfort living saints concerning their deceased loved ones. |
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He has convinced us that the believers in Christ, especially the Gentile believers, are a "special dispensation" of God. They are not required to practice righteousness, to love mercy, or to walk humbly with God. They are to say the name of Jesus and wave the wand of "grace." Now they are exempt from the laws of righteousness that govern all other men. No matter how they behave they will proceed straight to Paradise when they die. |
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This is the state of things in numerous churches throughout the world. We are in a period of deep apostasy. |
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Are you one of those who can hear the Spirit? Will you rise up and help us build the wall against sin? (from It Is Time for a Reformation of Christian Thinking) |
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Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul; Having your conversation [manner of life] honest among the Gentiles [nations]: that, whereas they speak against you as evildoers, they may by your good works, which they shall behold, glorify God in the day of visitation. (I Peter 2:11,12) |
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The true vision of God has been removed from the Christian churches and the people are being destroyed. Righteous conduct, that which God always emphasizes to man, is not being emphasized in today's Gospel preaching. |
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Unless God turns His face toward us and gives us the ability to repent, to cast out these false doctrines from the house of God, to begin living for Jesus as though our eternal life depended on it, the present generation of believers will face an angry Christ when they pass from the earth. |
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No doubt God soon will visit the wealthy nations of the earth with severe judgments. They are wasting the resources of the earth on their sins and comforts while hundreds of millions are starving spiritually and physically. |
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Where are the Christian churches in this picture? They will receive the greater judgment because they have the Word of truth and eternal life and yet are not setting an example of godliness to the world. They are not bearing a true witness of the Person, will, ways, and eternal purpose of the God of Heaven. |
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By stressing the grace of forgiveness at the expense of the grace of godly living we have extinguished the light of the testimony, the light of the lampstand of God. |
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Instead of the light of "good works" we are guiding the nations with our self-love, covetousness, immorality, and our willingness to seek the assistance and approval of men rather than the assistance and approval of God. The nations understand this type of behavior and so they are not moved to "glorify God in the day of visitation." |
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Where are God's prophets, His witnesses who cannot be bought with money, who care little for the assistance and approval of men but very much for the assistance and approval of God? |
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Where are the people who walk in prayer, who live in godly fear and brokenness of spirit before God? Where are those who know the joyful sound of the God of Israel? Where are God's holy people? Where are the saints? |
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It is time for God to turn to His own people by race—the Jews. But what are we giving to the Jews? We are giving them Gentile fables in place of God's plan of redemption, in place of the Kingdom of God. We are informing them that God will take the Gentiles to Paradise while the Jews without the Spirit of God face an enraged Antichrist. |
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How have the mighty fallen! How has truth perished in our land! |
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Is our generation lost to Christ or is it possible to dig out the Scriptures from the rubble of tradition and teach them once again? |
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Adhering to the truth of God's Word in a day when our institutions are teaching error will cause turmoil. There always have been consequences when people have chosen truth over popular error. It is our conviction that men and women of integrity do not waste time thinking about the consequences once they have been persuaded of truth. |
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Let each of us cast from himself as a filthy cloth the unscriptural traditions that have accumulated. Let us first assure ourselves that the traditions indeed are not scriptural, and then let us hurl them from us with boldness and the authority of the Word of God. |
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Any teaching that does not promote, as its first priority, righteous behavior, holiness of personality, and stern obedience to God through faith in the Lord Jesus, is not of God. |
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Let us turn again to the Lord. Let us cease teaching and preaching lies. God is to be feared as well as loved. Christ is to be feared as well as loved. The righteous shall walk with God; they can stand in the Fire of His Presence. The unrighteous cannot stand in the Presence of God, in the Presence of Christ, in the Kingdom of God. (from It Is Time for a Reformation of Christian Thinking) |
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For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live. (Romans 8:1) |
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The King, Christ Jesus, comes to us personally. When the Lord Jesus returns from Heaven every eye will see Him. But before His visible coming to the world He comes in the Spirit to the Christian who is pressing forward in the Kingdom of God. Jesus calls forth from the dead the various aspects of the believer's personality. |
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It is critically important that the Christian does not put off into some future age all the aspects of the resurrection from the dead, meanwhile living in the appetites of the flesh. We Christians already have passed from death into resurrection life. Our spiritual nature already is located in Heaven at the right hand of God because Christ is our Life. We are part of His resurrection and ascension to the right hand of God. Now the Lord must perform the work of creating resurrection life in our personality so we are able to express in our thinking and actions what is true of us in the heavenlies. |
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After we repent of our sins and are sprinkled with the blood of atonement, Christ is born in us. From this point forward the Spirit of God seeks to gain control of our mind, our tongue, our motives, and our actions. We are exhorted to live and walk in the Spirit of God and to shun the impulses and appetites of our body and soul. |
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The resurrection from the dead is at work in us now, not the resurrection of our body but the resurrection of our spirit and soul. Our inner man is responding to Divine Life now. This is why Paul warns us that if we live in the appetites of the flesh we will die. If we spend our energy and time in the occupations of the body and soul, the Divine Life that has been given us upon our receiving Christ will be crowded out of our personality. We will destroy our own resurrection. |
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Neglecting to cultivate the Divine Life that has been born in us leaves us in a corrupt condition. We become increasingly unable to respond to the call of Christ. Our inability to hear His voice will result in our being unable to respond to Him when He appears from Heaven. |
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Some will be taken but others, who have neglected their salvation, will be left. It is of the greatest importance that we lay hold on resurrection life today so that when the Lord comes our lamp will be burning brightly. |
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After we are saved and baptized with the Holy Spirit we enter the Life of the Holy Spirit. We learn to submit to God's Spirit. Learning to walk in the discipline and true liberty of the resurrection Life of the Spirit of God is part of the spiritual fulfillment of the blowing of Trumpets. The trumpet of the Lord sounds and the dead arise and walk in eternal life. |
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The Lord Jesus works with us faithfully, preparing us for our place in His Kingdom. The true saint has fellowship with his King each day (although sometimes the way becomes dark and perplexing and we must walk by blind faith). The coming of the King to us in this fashion is part of the spiritual fulfillment of the Levitical Blowing of Trumpets. |
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Each one of us can stand in triumph before the Lord in that Day. |
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If this is our hope let's get with the program! (from Deuteronomy 16:16) |
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